Amash’s Amendment To Defund NSA Program Fails 205-217 | Hacker News Reader

Amash’s Amendment To Defund NSA Program Fails 205-217

techcrunch.com

291 pointsllamataboot159 comments

Copied from the other thread, because it bears repeating:

I think it's important to keep in mind that the 12 vote margin is comfortable for Amash and supporters of new NSA restrictions and uncomfortable for its defenders.

Here's why: opponents of Amash wielded an argument that "split the vote". Representatives who voted against Amash could have done so for one of two reasons:

(1) They actively support providing the NSA with unchecked access to cell phone metadata under the "business records" provision of PATRIOT, or

(2) They don't support that access, but can't support a broad amendment that potentially de-funds whole NSA programs, and instead need something finer grained to correct NSA with.

Meanwhile, everyone who supported Amash believes strongly --- so strongly that they're willing to do something disruptive to NSA --- that new checks on NSA are needed.

(I think Amash was a good amendment, if only because it would force the House to do its actual job and carefully regulate intelligence collection; if it caused a temporary shitstorm, so much the better --- it'd be a well-deserved comeuppance for a legislature that has been derelict in its duty to oversee these programs. But you should be aware that opponents of Amash had a persuasive-sounding argument for voting it down even if you believed new regulations were needed.)

I think this was a pretty hopeful vote.

agreed, especially how quickly it came together and how hard the Dem establishment came down on it. I hope that this is the seed for a strongly bi-partisan group of legislators concerned about civil liberties.

especially how quickly it came together

There was some great coverage of this on the BBC[1] earlier today, before the result was known:

(Quotation begins)

However, the White House said the measure would deprive the intelligence agencies of a key tool in preventing terror attacks.

"This blunt approach is not the product of an informed, open or deliberative process," said spokesman Jay Carney.

(Quotation ends)

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23430126 (emphasis added)

Of course Jay Carney's statement was pretty ironic... Can't have an informed discussion on something that everyone lies about.

Not to mention the sheer lack of informed discussion when passing the PATRIOT Act in the first place.

A majority of House Democrats voted for it. That is a significant rebuke of the Obama administration.

Yes, the numbers were:

   Republicans: 94 yea, 134 nay (41% in favor)
   Democrats: 111 yea, 83 nay (57% in favor)

Not too surprising, since traditionally "strong on national security" is a core GOP position, and the party establishment tends to see civil-liberties challenges to national security policy as misguided. That might overrule any partisan instinct to vote against Obama.

is there a link of the individual votes? govtrack.us doesn't look to be that up to date

Yes, it was just posted: http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2013/roll412.xml

I had looked when I posted my comment so I could link it along with the numbers, but 25 mins ago it wasn't up yet.

Just talking out my butt here, but I think on most votes they have a pretty good idea of where most congresspeople plan to vote and whether or not the amendment will pass. So if some republicans knew it wouldn't pass with their yea vote, they could have felt comfortable giving it a yea as taking credit for standing up to "the administration." Whereas they may not have actually given that vote if they thought it mattered. This opinion is based on no other data than watching House of Cards on netflix and Veep on HBO.

This. The general public has no idea how much posturing is involved in such votes. These people will even trade votes: the Dem says "Please, I want to appear strong on defence, so I'll vote no, while you (the Republican) can vote yes".

Source: knew a couple of people who had worked as aides to congresscritters

I think this tweet is pretty spot on:

"Rotating Villains strike again: Just enough liberals inexplicably voted no on NSA restrictions to make it the way Obama wanted."

https://twitter.com/brmull/status/360192763502931968

You can read the read the tea leaves and see anything you want. It's unusual for so many Democrats to vote against a program being administered by a Democratic president.

Happens a lot: http://www.salon.com/2010/02/23/democrats_34/

Call me a pessimist, but those "strong on national security" might use this vote as a hammer against their opponents in future elections -- voted against securing this country against those terrorists...

Sad that this was my first thought.

You're right. In fact, this just in:

> Holt’s bill, the “Surveillance State Repeal Act”, would repeal the PATRIOT Act and the FISA Amendments Act, each of which contains provisions that allowed the dragnet surveillance. The bill would reinstate a uniform probable cause-based warrant standard for surveillance requests, and prohibit the federal government from forcing technology companies from building in hardware or software “back doors” to make it easier for the government to spy on the public. Additional features of the bill include the true legal protections for national security whistleblowers, as well as changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to give it greater expertise in reviewing and challenging executive branch applications for surveillance operations.

http://ggsidedocs.blogspot.com.br/2013/07/rush-holt-repeal-s...

I love having that man represent me! I pay a lot of attention to what goes on, but I could safely stop reading any news and still be sure that my representative was doing the right thing. We need more 5 time Jeopardy champions/actual rocket scientists in Congress.

make sure to vote for him on August 13 in the Senate primary.

Agreed: as a British citizen, I find this vote incredibly close.

As an analogy, there is absolutely no political will here to change the status quo regarding unchecked data collection. The two largest political parties would likely be automatically against an equivalent amendment on national security grounds, whipping their members to vote against (and few members would care to break ranks).

As such, no vote would even take place. If it was forced in a full chamber, it would perhaps fall 100-550.

Edited to add: Exemplified by a spending review announced a month ago http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23060592 "3.4% increase in combined budget for intelligence agencies": meanwhile many other budgets are squeezed by 5-10%

3.4% increase in combined budget for intelligence agencies

Yes, that was a rather striking discrepancy. Our media seem to be giving the current administration a free ride lately regarding civil liberties generally and trying to control the Internet in particular. Maybe everyone is too busy worrying about getting onto the "Bob watches porn" list this week to worry about getting onto any other lists that may or may not be relevant to this discussion as well.

It is very close, especially when you consider that a million more Americans voted for a Democrat House candidate than a Republican one.

Republicans have a 33 seat majority, despite losing the popular vote 48.7% - 47.6%, thanks to rampant gerrymandering after the 2010 election.

I did a (meaningless) back of the envelope calculation, and found that if the number of representatives were proportional to the popular vote count, and the same percentage of Democrats voted for this bill, then the bill would have passed.

Of course, it probably wouldn't have made it through the senate, since the non-talking filibuster allows any single member to effectively veto any bill brought up.

As far as I can tell, this issue crosses party lines. Republicans voted 94-134 against the amendment, and Democrats voted 111-83 for it. A fairly even spread, compared to any number of more partisan issues.

http://www.scribd.com/mobile/doc/155815805

It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with gerrymandering (though it likely does to some extent). A more likely cause is that cities tend to have a democrat win by a wide margin and rural areas tend to have a republican win by a smaller margin. Combine that with the fact that all districts aren't identical in size and you get a legitimate way for this to happen.

Whipping in the United States Congress is far less effective than in Parliament. There is no equivalent to the three line whip and the party leadership can't expel members. The most they can do to rebellious members is take away their preferred committee assignments, and even there they are hemmed in by tradition.

However, particularly for Republicans at the present time, there is always a looming threat of a primary challenge if ideological purity is not maintained.

They can't expel members, but they can certainly kick them out of caucus. That's effectively the same immediate power parties have in a parliament: when someone is removed from caucus they sit as an independent.

The biggest direct difference is that in many parliamentary systems the party has control over who will run under their banner in the next election. In the US, the only power they have is indirect via fundraising.

Really the difference is one of expectation: in the parliamentary system party discipline is just a ground rule that's understood by everybody. If your MP votes for something you don't like they can say "Yeah I didn't like that bill either and I brought up my concerns during our caucus meeting. Ultimately the party decided to support it though" and you don't really think less of them.

That expectation cuts the other way too. If a US Representative got kicked out of caucus over a controversial vote it would be considered shockingly petty. It'd be the major political story for weeks and would tarnish the whole party. In parliament that's just what happens and nobody would expect any different. A semi-recent Canadian that comes to mind: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/story/2007/06/05/b...

As you mention, they can (and do) withhold committee assignments. Usually this is done more on the sly though rather than as an obvious retaliation. Members that have a reputation for toeing the party line get the nice assignments, the pork project for their district, etc. The "guy none of us can stand but keeps getting elected without our help" just gets to posture for the cameras.

As a Swiss I'm always amazed how in indirect democracies, 'political will' equates to whatever the top ruling people are up to, depending largely on what lobbyist de jour is paying best as well as the proximity of elections. It's absurd to me to be honest. Why wouldn't you want a system where (a) the final say can always be cast by people's votes and (b) the government is put together proportionally? This basically mitigates both of these problems: (1) Elections become way less important, so the parties don't throw too much money into them - winning 2% every 4 years, in rare cases an additional cabinet member of 7, just doesn't justify putting hundreds of millions into a campaign. (2) Lobbying is worth much less as well since you can't lobby people very easily.

And yes, I'm aware that every system has flaws and people's votes aren't always sane - but given the alternatives...

I am extremely interested in direct democracy, and the possibility of using it for larger populations thanks to technology improvements. To my knowledge the main argument against direct democracy has been "it only works for small groups". Could modern computing and telecommunications change that?

First of all, yes, that's always the argument I hear. That and people not taking Switzerland seriously since it's anyway just Nazi gold and gangster banks enabling us to do what we do, right?

Online voting tools could definitely change the cost as well as the legitimacy of running a superpower scale direct democracy. In Switzerland we largely handle it through voting by letter and every commune handles the counting - technically it's certainly possible to have fraud at that point, however at least I'm not aware of any case where a people's vote would have been faked that way.

Anyway, for larger scale voting I'd have a look at this TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/david_bismark_e_voting_without_frau.... E-voting combined with tokens on paper seems to be the winner for me.

But don't forget, the stability of the Swiss system doesn't only come from its direct democratic nature, I'd say the principle of proportionality applied to the government, as I mentioned above, is at least as important. In Switzerland this ensures both checks and balances as well as a government that represents the current political views of the parliament. Also, it lead to a multi-party system with 5 larger players and dynamic coalitions depending on the actual issue. Together with the constant fear of the people's vote this handles most issues quite neatly - even if the process tends to be a bit slower, the output of 'bullshit' is much lower than the things I read from abroad if you will.

The main argument against direct democracy is the danger of majoritarian oppression: e.g. imagine calling a vote to reinstate slavery and succeeding because 51% of the population supports slavery. Having a set of laws like the Bill of Rights that is agreed upon by consensus and enforced by courts is a safeguard against that.

There's nothing in direct democracy inconsistent with a constitution securing basic rights and a supreme court enforcing it. Indeed, Switzerland has exactly that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Federal_Constitution

The main argument against, as I see it, is the lack of accountability, the prime example being California demanding more spending and lower taxes at the same time. Of course, indirect democracy has done very little to prevent that either.

When Switzerland doesn't pass laws similar to California's, I think it's because they have a much more homogenous society where there is simply a large degree of agreement on how things should be done - and so, the remaining bits lend themselves well to be decided by direct democracy.

That's also my response to the GP: no, no amount of interwebs and technology can turn a large and diverse population that disagrees fundamentally on many important issues into a small and homogenous one that agrees on most things.

The Swiss aren't homogeneous, though. They have four official languages and 20% of the country are resident foreigners. The various cantons don't often agree with each other and only 30-40% of the country votes.

Thank you. Here it is again, the 'US isn't homogeneous' excuse.

It's not like representative democracy stops this... See 1865-1965.

How likely is it that a majority of a modern society would agree to something crazy like this, vs. just the ruling party of an indirect democracy? Unfortunately we don't have much statistical evidence, since there's basically only Switzerland having such a system nationwide, but at least we know that in the history of this republic since 1848 there hasn't been such an incident, while the Weimarer Republic, culturally close to a majority of Swiss and under an indirect democratic rule, managed to elect a ruling party that went haywire.

Although I would criticise my own system just as heavily as you do, the Swiss system is not exactly idyllic either: right-wing propaganda led the Swiss people into banning minarets.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minaret_controversy_in_Switzer...

As I mentioned - people's votes aren't always sane. That being said the Minaret thing was a non sensical outcome, yes, but it doesn't really change that much. Mosks are still allowed and the Muslim community didn't seem to bother too much. I'm convinced that if the initiative were to forbid mosks or any essential part of Muslim religion, the result would have been completely different.

Looking at recent referendum topics, it seems to me that the right-wing Swiss People's Party have a lot of power and skill in choosing referenda that appeal to a mob majority against vulnerable minorities.

e.g. the June 2013 referendum also has an astounding result, on Asylum law changes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_referendum%2C_2013#Asylu...

I'm really conflicted about indirect vs direct democracies.

On one hand, indirect democracies allow the ruling few to impose their will rather than the will of the people. On the other hand, many people are ignorant of the facts and could be persuaded to vote poorly (eg against the best interests of the majority) in a direct democracy.

Then the people will have to live with and hopefully learn from the consequences of their decisions.

> I think this was a pretty hopeful vote.

It's easy to vote 'yea' on something that you know will never become law. Even if the House would have approved it AND the Senate it would just get vetoed by Obama.

I remain hopeful. And I hope this at least signals to the executive branch that maybe, just maybe the legislative branch has balls. We just need to keep the pressure on them and just keep pushing for it. Call your congress critter today.

Obama couldn't veto the Amash amendment without vetoing the entire NDAA. So, no, that's not true.

Would it be as easy as you say to veto this? There would be a HUGE uproar across the country if this had passed both houses of Congress and got killed by the Commander and Chief.

no, it was attached to the defense appropriations bill, so it wouldn't have been vetoed, but it would have been really tough to pass the Senate...

it would just get vetoed by Obama

This would be extremely important. At the moment Obama's principle seems to avoid the subject as much as possible. And if it is addressed just blaming the "system". By vetoing it he would take personal responsibility for this scandal, something he will try to avoid at all costs.

Agreed. This is the closest vote on anything related to the Patriot Act in a long time; and the bipartisan support is very encouraging.

It also gets lots of people on the record making claims about the capabilities of the NSA and how much they are really collecting. Many of these people are on the intelligence committee and have been fully briefed on everything the NSA is doing and they use those credentials to support their claims of authority.

Glenn Greenwald says that he has hundreds (if not thousands) of documents, including NSA training manuals, that prove Snowden's claims about NSA analysts having the technical ability to listen to and read the contents of "billions" of phone, email, and chat conversations. See his response starting at 19:51 in this interview:

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/7/18/glenn_greenwald_growin...

Senator Wyden's recent comments support the idea that there is much more coming in this story.

http://www.americanprogressaction.org/events/2013/07/16/6975...

It is incredibly hopeful that there is this much support for an amendment like this before the full story has been told. I hope the Senate is forced to take up a similar vote (less likely for sure) before the full details are published because it would be very valuable to get the position of every Senator on record before November 2014.

Is there a list/site somewhere that shows all the people that voted against vs. for this?

Yes, you can find the roll call here.

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2013/roll412.xml

Are there any good visualizations for this data? It'd be cool to be able to like, filter it, see it on an interactive map by state, etc.

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/113-2013/h412

Coming soon

The nytimes has this: http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/113/house/1/412

http://www.scribd.com/doc/155815805/Final-Vote-Results-for-R...

> But you should be aware that opponents of Amash had a persuasive-sounding argument for voting it down even if you believed new regulations were needed.

Compromise arguments are often persuasive, but the vast majority of legislation succumbs to the fallacy of middle ground (or "argument to moderation"), assuming that the compromise is always right.

See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window , for which this seems like a textbook example. Claim way too much ground, give up part of it, repeat.

This is not a case for a compromise: the program is entirely wrong and needs to entirely die.

On the other side of the coin, the 12 vote margin is still a 'no', and the party whips (or whoever was rallying the vote for this considering it was bipartisan) may have given "permission" for people to break ranks for their re-election or fundraising campaigns once the determination was made that there weren't going to be enough 'yea' votes to win it in the first place.

A 'no' is always a 'no', don't look much into the fact that it was a fairly close 'no'.

I know that is how things work, but isn't that the sign of a fundamentally broken process. Shouldn't each representative be required to vote in a way that is blind to the success or failure of a piece of legislation.

It seems like such a process would automatically bias votes against the will of the people and in favor of the lobbyists, since at the end of the day it is the lobbyists that are actually paying attention to your voting record on issues and are likely to withhold campaign donations during the next election.

Lobbyists aren't the only problem.

The House majority has 33 more seats than the minority, despite losing the popular vote by over a million votes. To me, this is the epitome of how broken Washington is. Pennsylvania has 13 Republican representatives and 5 Democrat reps, even though Democrats won the popular vote, 50.28% to 48.77%.

What "popular vote" are you talking about. It's meaningless in this context given every congressional district is a separate race.

Congressional districts are supposed to allow equitable representation. The total popular vote is useful for determining whether the representation is fair. If districts are drawn correctly then the percentage of popular vote a political party wins should be should be close to percentage of representatives elected for that party. The closer the difference between the popular vote split and the representative split, the fairer the election.

If the difference between the two tallies is off by more than 33%, then there is something fundamentally broken. It allows candidates to spew extremist views, because they won't be challenged in their home district.

I don't know the details but its not necessarily gerrymandering. if urban areas are 100% democrat while rural areas are 60% republican, you'd see this sort of elections naturally, without any foul play. that's just a natural outcomes of having districts.

So who decides the mix of urban-to-rural in each district?

It's not "indicative" of any real sinister work. It's a body of human beings, this is how bodies of human beings work. That's all.

> Shouldn't each representative be required to vote in a way that is blind to the success or failure of a piece of legislation.

I don't see how that would help unless they were somehow prevented from conspiring (i.e., discussing their votes ahead of time).

I don't think a lot of people know this. "Yes" votes are "given out" by party leaders as favors to to those who are willing to play ball so that they can please the folks back home when the outcome of the issue is already assured.

When a candidate makes a big deal during a campaign about how they voted against the grain on a particularity thorny issue that pleased a lot of voters in their district, take it with a huge grain of salt and a hard look at their broader voting record.

Notice how overwhelming the vote was for the other amendment which claimed to limit the NSA but apparently just reiterated the current wording.

The way I'm looking at it is that there was a chance that this amendment was going to be the most that was ever done about it. The door is not closed on modifying what the Intelligence Agencies surveille, and there can now be an even better bill passed outside of a defense appropriations bill, on its own terms.

Now we know who the political enemies of true freedom are.

Your representative is probably on Twitter. If you've got an account tweet how they voted and what you think about it. Be polite. You can of course email and call them too to share you viewpoint.

Find your Representative - http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/

Amash vote - http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2013/roll412.xml

Thanks for the links! I learned who my representative was and sent him a respectful e-mail inquiring about his nay vote.

Thank you, just did this. My rep (Bill Flores) voted "no".

I think this should be higher. I also found my representative and said thank you for supporting the bill. And thank you for posting the links.

I'm knowingly paying an organization to openly wage cyber warfare and espionage operations on me?

Splendid. At least we may get a few good HPC and IR publications out of it.

Actually, it will probably be outsourced to contractors who will squander it away without producing anything.

Unless, that is, the next 9/11 gets planned using twitter hashtags. Actually, since the Sandy Hook shooter openly talked about his plans on 4chan, I'm guessing that even a twitter campaign would still "pass under the radar".

I bet the only real consequence is that someone will lose a laptop with like, everybody's social security number and financial history on it. It's going to be so awesome.

Clarify acronyms please?

From what Wikipedia can tell me, the two most relevant terms those acronyms refer too are "High-performance computing" and "Information retrieval".

That makes sense. I was thinking maybe "Incident Response" :-)

> Actually, given that the Sandy Hook shooter openly talked about his plans on 4chan, I'm guessing that even that would still "pass under the radar".

Hoax?

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/415935/20121217/sandy-hook...

ok fine. Gabriel Giffords shooter posted pictures and details on his MySpace profile prior to the assassination attempt.

And for people like Colleen LaRose or the Underwear bomber, just a web browser and plain-old internet led to the apprehension. With Michael Reynolds, traditional "law enforcement officers posing as honeypots" style did the trick.

These classical methods seem to be working quite alright.

What is the use-case here? Some dastardly secret terrorist conspiracy where they collaboratively make detailed plans, over the internet, in clear text, like this:

-----

From: evilbomber@yahoo.com

Subject: Re: RE: re: re: Re: Secret plans

To: confidant@not-the-fbi.com

CC: coconspirator@gmail.com, evildoer2213@excite.com, bombmaker@msn.com

Attachments: annotated-map.pdf

----

Hey all,

After reviewing the bombing plans of the terrorist attack next Tuesday, set for Washington DC, when the Secretary of State, Jon Carey, is set to arrive by motorcade at 4:15 PM, I've decided that our assassination attempt (where we plan to Kill Jon Carey) would be best suited for a different intersection.

As you can see here, there is a better place to bomb the motorcade.

Also, I've gotten all the parts for the IED. This includes the incendiary, a timer, and all the wiring necessary. I carefully asked a bunch of questions on various open forums and posted pictures to confirm I made everything right. I also disclosed my intended use of the bombs along with my radical political leanings.

Anyway, Down with the USA, and I hope to meet all of you to make this death of a US diplomat a reality, next Tuesday, at 4:15 PM.

Patiently Awaiting Martyrdom,

evilbomber.

P.S.: What's encryption?

>ok fine. Gabriel Giffords shooter posted pictures and details on his myspace profile prior to the assassination attempt.

Not exactly.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/01/08/20110108ar...

>What is the use-case here? Some dastardly secret terrorist conspiracy where they collaboratively make detailed plans, over the internet, in cleartext?

Well of course.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/22/ba_jihadist_trial_se...

I highly doubt that the NSA's current surveillance program is worth it's potential collateral damage.

I'm just amazed that someone would go through all the effort to plan an attack of terror and not do a single web search to see if their inventive cryptography system has any notable issues.

I think people can do their own crypto as long as they are exceptionally prudent in doing their own homework.[1] He clearly wasn't.

el oh el.

----

[1] The authors of RSA and AES aren't demigods that descended from mount Olympus; they are people that did their own crypto, but with the right amount of focus and caution. It's clearly possible for a competent person to invent their own. Just like someone could invent their own operating system or programming language. It's just rarely appropriate to do so for a single task.

Speaking from personal experience, I'd recommend not using real names in a fake plot like this.

Alright, swapped out.

> And for people like Colleen LaRose or the Underwear bomber, just a web browser and plain-old internet led to the apprehension.

The underwear bomber was apprehended because a passenger on the plane tackled the bomber and put out the fire he'd started. The incident was acknowledged by the government (eventually) as a failure of the security apparatus to catch the guy ahead of time.

Alright I was mistaken, apologies. Reviewing the wikipedia page, it looks like a large number of people raised red flags on the guy. I guess my overall concern is that I fail to see how this exotic spying tool will address such human failing.

First, thanks for your willingness to admit a mistake - it's unfortunately rare. Second, you're right, all the same - plain old detective work is still effective without the privacy concerns (or, fewer concerns, at least).

I laughed out loud at your letter, but I'm sure you'll still get some attention from DSS.

I think this is the end of the cloud. For me (as european) it is now unacceptable to use american webservices and remote apps. We had a good run.

Give it a little while. This is the very first time this issue has come up for a vote post-Snowden, it's also in the summer when plenty of people are not paying all that much attention to this sort of thing (vacations and such).

This vote has demonstrated a really serious intent to change things, and there's a good chance they will be in due course.

All discusion so far has been about spying on US citizen. EU citizens have zero rights in this case.

For me (as european) it is now unacceptable to use american webservices and remote apps.

As someone running businesses in Europe, I am genuinely concerned about whether the Safe Harbor scheme still protects us legally if we allow US-based services to use personal data about our customers.

As I understand it, the point of Safe Harbor is to recognise that some US-based companies have data protection measures sufficient to meet the stronger European standards, and therefore to permit the export of such personal data outside the EEA to those trusted partners where this would otherwise be against the law.

Given that the protection that any US-based partner can offer is now known to be limited, and that no-one running a business here could credibly claim not to be aware of that, I don't know where we'd stand legally if a politically active customer decided to make a point. Even if we openly disclose which US-based partners are involved as part of the relevant privacy policy, it still leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

It already started. Irish Google has been sued recently for sharing data with american mothership.

Given the tepid reaction (or tacit endorsement) of Europe to the spying revelations, I'm not sure what country to put trust in for cloud services or hosting.

Germany and Switzerland seems like a good choice.

Or wherever The Pirate Bay or Wikileaks or others of their ilk host their servers I would imagine. Sweden[1] it seems?

"According to Assange, Switzerland and Iceland are the only countries where WikiLeaks would be safe to operate."

I wouldn't be too sure about Germany at all. Switzerland because of it's historic neutrality and rule of law makes sense.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pionen

Iceland is too small and I bet most of its trafic goes via US or UK. Germany has strong privacy protection laws thanks to its history.

There's actually a strong cooperation going on between the BND (German foreign intelligence service) and the NSA, with the NSA praising the BND as key partners and other fancy things. [1]

So sadly, there isn't truly any "safe" country out there for hosting your data... Sweden's military tends to track all border-crossing network connections, the BND seems to be listening at DE-CIX... Also, I'm sure that Switzerland routes their data through some internet exchange node that some NSA-friendly intelligence agency listens at.

In terms of data protection laws & how much access to your actual servers the authorities get, I believe that German & Swiss laws are quite good though.

[1] http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&pre...

For me (as a European) I think it shows that there's life left in the democratic process in the US. I am heartened by that. It shows, though the effort failed, that there is a strong bi-partisan backlash against mass surveillance. I think it also shows up badly how silent European countries have been; where are similar parliamentary revolts in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, ...?

I am very glad the vote was close, it would have been utterly terrible if it was not close. The executive branch is well out of step with the House. One really wonders if the president's pre-election rhetoric was naivety or lies. I suspect a bit of both. I believe that it points to the fact that the executive branch has been partly captured by the military, let's not forget that a general heads what should be essentially a civilian organ.

The issue still remains though that even if miraculously provisions are put into place for US citizens we still have the mass surveillance of every other nation's citizens by numerous nations just because net traffic is routed through their geographic location. Never mind tapping into trans-oceanic cables - if that's true, I can't believe that could be true, how horrific. We need a Geneva convention on mass surveillance / privacy. It's going to take years and years. Also, what do all the spooks do with all that hardware?

Twelve votes? That's it? Wow, that's incredible. The first real tide change we've seen since the passage of the patriot act. Those who voted Nay seemed to do so because "metadata isn't covered under the 4th amendment."

Wait until they find out the NSA is raking in the call contents too [1]

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/29/glenn-greenwald-nsa...

Republican: 94 yea 134 Nay Democratic: 111 yea 83 Nay

Pretty close and party lines didn't seem all that important.

Some of the Republicans were probably swayed by the Heritage Foundation's critique of the amendment's wording. This is the type of issue that won't be a party line vote, but I would be curious about an age breakdown.

This surprised me too - especially given the rhetoric I was hearing from the lamestream media about this vote being cast along party lines.

Given that the majority of Dems in the house voted for it - in fact more than Republicans - I think that is a MAJOR, MAJOR rebuke to Obama.

I am sure he will notice that.

Would be interested in a consolidated list names of those who voted in favor and against this bill.

I would be interested in knowing where I can find this sort of information in general.

govtrack.us generally has this info although I don't think this particular vote is posted yet.

Senate: http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/vote_m...

House: http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2013/index.asp

Look later (today or definitely tomorrow) at http://thomas.loc.gov/home/thomas.php ; click on Bill Number, enter H.R. 2397 (periods are necessary), click on the correct search result.

For this particular amendment and vote, go to the lower right corner where there's "All Congressional Actions with Amendments".

here's raw if the links posted by others are 404ing for you: https://gist.github.com/beaugunderson/6075673

It's not available yet, but will be posted first at http://clerk.house.gov/cgi-bin/vote.asp?year=2013&rollnumber...

SF HNers: Rep. Pelosi was against the ammendment.

so vote her out.

Good luck with that, she is an incumbent and incumbents have a greater than 90% reelection rate. All of her primary challengers have been total nuts like Cindy Sheehan in the past, and she easily coasts to victory every two years.

Ah you must mean that nutbag Cindy Sheehan whose son was killed during the ill-judged invasion/occupation of Iraq.

"Near the end of his active service, the U.S. invasion of Iraq began. [Casey] Sheehan reenlisted, knowing that his unit would be sent there.[5] Sheehan's division, the First Cavalry Division, was sent to Iraq. On March 19, 2004, Sheehan's Battery C, 1st Battalion, 82nd Field Artillery Regiment, arrived at FOB Camp War Eagle in Sadr City. On April 4, 2004, Sheehan was killed in action after volunteering to be part of a Quick Reaction Force to rescue American troops."

She then goes on to become a vocal critic of the previous and current admin. She becomes an antiwar activist.

I don't doubt that she has conviction, but I question her ability to be an effective advocate in Congress compared to the (then) Speaker of the House.

Maybe Ro Khanna will move over and run against her!

Seriously, though, Swalwell proved that it can be done. Get somebody serious to run against her. I know I always relished voting against her when I lived in SF even though I had to hold my nose and vote Republican.

> incumbents have a greater than 90% reelection rate

Which is mind-boggling, considering that the Congress' approval rating is 12% ! Thing about it: only 12% of the people think that the Congress is doing a good job, and these people STILL get re-elected! Is it any wonder that we're in this mess?

http://www.usatoday.com/story/theoval/2013/07/24/obama-congr...

That's Congress's general approval rating, when you ask someone to nonspecifically rate "Congress". When you ask them to rate their own specific Congressperson (which is who they can vote for or against), approval averages around 45-50%, and rises to 60% among people who actually know the Representative's name [1]. So the average American strongly dislikes Representatives from other districts, but is okay with their own.

[1] http://www.gallup.com/poll/162362/americans-down-congress-ow...

SF HNers: Rep. Pelosi was against the ammendment.

Surprising no one.

Its worth noting that from my quick glance, she was the only Bay Area congressperson to vote No. Incredibly disappointed

Depends on what you count as the Bay Area, but here's a tally for a sort of extended version of it:

   CA-2: Huffman (D), yes
   CA-3: Garamendi (D), yes
   CA-5: Thompson (D), no
   CA-11: Miller (D), yes
   CA-12: Pelosi (D), no
   CA-13: Lee (D), yes
   CA-14: Speier (D), yes
   CA-15: Swalwell (D), yes
   CA-17: Honda (D), yes
   CA-18: Eshoo (D), yes
   CA-19: Lofgren (D), yes
   CA-20: Farr (D), yes

So 10/12 of the Bay Area voted yes, rather disproportionately in favor compared to the nationwide vote. Until putting together this list, I hadn't actually realized there are no Republicans in the entire extended Bay Area, incidentally. You have to go all the way to Modesto to find a GOP Congressman (in CA-10, where Denham voted "no").

Because the SF people vote her in like sheep, again and again. She knows her seat is not threatened, so she'll vote in her _own_ interests.

I refuse to vote for her. I'll vote for the Republican challenger every time.

Or, perhaps a little less cynically: she's the minority leader so she's expected to vote in the party's interest. When your party holds the White House that basically means supporting the administration.

I don't mean this as a defense of Pelosi though. I'm also in CA-12; I usually just abstain from voting for US Rep.

Here is the roll call with a map from the NYT:

http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/113/house/1/412

Not only did the vote fail to break along party lines, it didn't break along geographic lines either. Outside of the Bay Area, I don't see any obvious patterns, like an urban / rural split. Does anyone see anything else?

Good question. It's more muddled than typical votes.

If you take the party line (Dems favored the amendment, Reps disfavored) as a baseline, you have to explain two things: solid red (R's who voted Yes) and striped blue (D's who voted No).

So, the regional delta's on that baseline: (1) the Western states (Montana down to New Mexico) had plenty of Republican votes for (solid red); (2) the DC-NY area had more Dem votes against (striped blue). The standard explanation of (1) would be libertarian Westerners, and for (2) would be, that was where 9/11 was, plus that's where much of the intelligence community lives. If you're in the government, you may trust the government more.

I don't know how to explain the consistent voting of Tennessee and South Carolina.

I don't think you can take that party line as a baseline.

The president is democrat and is for it - democrat congressmen would have to notice that. But they didn't.

I think this issue simply has no party division, it.s each person with their own opinion. (If only all politics could be like that.)

Sure, each congressperson has their own opinion. But this observation provides no explanatory power.

As others have said, one crude characterization of D/R split is that R is generally more supportive of spending for national security. I think this provides the ideological basis for the D/R split.

The interests of the President are not aligned with those of Congress in this case: the President is a consumer of the intel. This is why the D's in Congress did not follow him.

Additionally, I suspect that Congresspersons have noticed that their constituents are getting restless about intel collection. Obama doesn't have to run for election again, but they do.

As an observer of politics, I too find this vote very interesting.

> As others have said, one crude characterization of D/R split is that R is generally more supportive of spending for national security.

The split clearly doesn't work in this case.

I think the reason is that R is more concerned with privacy than D. Also R likes looking strong to other countries - this means spending on the military, they are not interesting in spending for the sake of spending. But the NSA fiasco does not make the US look strong in front of other countries.

D is more concerned with looking good in front of other countries (as opposed to strong), and the NSA situation doesn't do that either.

I suspect the ones that voted for it believe that the increase in security is worth the loss of face.

As posted elsewhere here:

   Republicans: 94 yea, 134 nay (41% in favor)
   Democrats: 111 yea, 83 nay (57% in favor)

It's not as party-line as many high-profile votes, but it's a significant difference.

That is quite the map.

Off the top of my head, it appears that the leadership on both sides was against it (Pelosi, Cantor, Boehner)

If I had more time on my hands, I'd go check to see if tea party/progressive caucus/cbc/freshmen/intelligence committee went one way or another.

They get to split quite a few incentives here: Dems have the incentive to vote no to side with their president, R's have the opposite (and it's a republican amendment). The stereotypical platform of the two sides is the reverse of this, but both parties are generically pro-surveillance.

Repost from another thread on the same issue:

I really do commend everyone involved in this effort. This is how the system is supposed to work, citizens making their voices know, and the legislature acting upon the will of the people.

Honestly you guys got far closer to your goal than I would have anticipated. The bipartison support was almost unprecedented in recent years.

From a practical matter, even if the House bill passed it was dead on arrival in the Senate. But nevertheless it is a significant symbolic blow to blank surveillance against American citizens.

All I've tried to communicate, perhaps with less than appropriate tact, is that this is going to be a long slog.

If you're going to reign in the surveillance state, you'll need to start thinking like Washington insiders. Pick one incumbent that vocally supported these programs, and take him or her down. That will instantly catapult this issue to the top of the concerns in DC.

It only costs a few million to get that done. Considering the wealth of the tech industry, and the threat this poses to overseas expansion of the US internet services, donations shouldn't be overly difficult to drum up. We could really make a large dent in getting the legislature to help roll back these programs to sane levels. Add to that an anit-SOPA style social media campaign, and you could accomplish real and lasting change.

If this is to be fought the time is close at hand. First off if this is played as a left vs right issue it will lose. Second this needs to be won at the primary level. If both the democrat and the republican in a district/state are against it, then it doesn't really matter who wins as far as this issue is concerned. Bonus points if when the debates start, instead of opposite sides of the issue, they try to one up each other on how they will dismantle the surveillance state. I think asking your Representative their stand on this issue as well as any one else who enters the race is a good start but also try to get some sort of pledge that they will work across the isle with the other party to get this done.

This will need at least two election cycles to be successful. Everyone in the house is up for re-election every two years but the senate requires six for everyone to go through the re-election process. I think with some luck, the third senate election cycle might not be needed if enough momentum can be attained. But I think to really succeed it will have to survive a filibuster and possibly a presidential veto.

We can do this if we are willing to put aside our political differences, work together and think long term.

I am wondering why we didn't see a /single/ large tech company release something in support of this. Even something as simple as a press release...

If congress were to pass some law (over Obama's veto) limiting the intelligence agencies, what is to stop the administration from coming up with a secret interpretation of the new law that effectively ignored it? They are already in violation of current law, as the author of the Patriot Act has stated.

Democracy has been completely subverted at this point. We need impeachments and new anti-secrecy laws.

Nothing, but good luck claiming victories achieved under an illegal interpretation (see: Iran-Contra).

If you don't trust the government to follow the law in the former case, why would you trust them to follow anti-secrecy laws in the latter?

Either the system can possibly work or it can't, you can't say the process is a sham then suggest a legislative solution.

Even though I don't have the time to do it, I have a feeling that if you drilled down into the votes some more, you would likely see a pattern/relationship re: authority.

i.e. those in higher authority would have voted it down (Boehner, Pelosi, etc.) and those with less authority supported it. So the powerful preserving their power, with the less powerful challenging it.

That alone can speak volumes about the potential for their power crumbling. Boehner has been on the ropes recently with his caucus warning him to tread carefully.

If that turns out to be the case, then the leadership has big problems. Both in the House and the Whitehouse.

That could be good for the issue over the long-term....which is encouraging to me as a "foreigner".

If you're going come up with an interesting theory like that you almost have an obligation to track it down definitely.

Otherwise you're just making an assumption, and drawing conclusions from it without knowing if your assumption is right.

I know the feeling, but I figured I would just put it out there and let people more versed at this stuff than I find the relationships, if any exist and let us know.

> and let people ...let us know.

That virtually never happens. You have to do the work yourself.

The bit about "...not the product of an informed, open, or deliberative process" illustrates the hypocrisy inherent to the ruling class.

They rarely hold themselves to the same standards which they set forth for the proletariat.

The votes from members of the Permanent House Select Committee on Intelligence were 2 yes, 21 no.

By party, that was among Democrats 2 yes, 8 no, and among Republicans 0 yes, 13 no.

The tool who represents my district actually voted AYE. Maybe there is hope for this body of morons.

Is this the will of the people?

Not yet, but it's getting closer.

Don't assume you're privy to the will of the people.

With >50% regularly in polls, I'd say it's a fairly safe bet.

Have a look at this poll by WashPost/ABC:

http://www.langerresearch.com/uploads/1150a3SnowdenandSecuri...

A majority of those surveyed now think Snowden should be criminally charged for his leaking and don't view the surveillance as an unjustified intrusion into people's privacy; interestingly, more people thought it wasn't an unjustified intrusion into their own privacy vs. the privacy of others.

It's just one poll, yeah, but don't assume you know the will of the people.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but in the poll you linked to, the question that's most relevant to Amash's amendment was the following:

    17. Do you think that the National Security Agency's surveillance of telephone
    call records and internet traffic does or does not intrude on some Americans'
    privacy rights?

    Does Intrude: 74%
    Does Not Intrude: 22%
    No Opinion: 4%

It's a bit more complicated than that.

If you look further down, you'll see that there's a breakdown by people who feel the intrusion is justified or not. Further, when you look at responses for how people view the surveillance as an intrusion into their own privacy vs. that of others, you find people are either less likely to view it as an intrusion into their privacy or more likely to view it as a justified intrusion.

It clearly does "intrude" whatever that means, the question is: does it intrude illegally or unreasonably? The relevant chart is on page 2: 58% think it's either not an intrusion or a justified intrusion, and 34% think it's an unjustified intrusion.

My rep. actually voted NO to the bill, and I didn't like it. Guess what? I've since emailed my rep. so he now know how I feel. Next time, if similar vote comes up, I'll call my rep... That's how democracy work.

Lets ask the press what the will of the people is first, so we know how we should feel about this.

Really interesting thing here is that 12 people didn't vote, exactly the margin of defeat. I wonder how many of them were leaning towards voting for it, and how many of them were strong advised (coerced) to abstain.

It's really interesting looking at the people who voted against this -- Nancy Pelosi and Michelle Bachmann?

Maybe its a Spectacle for hegelDialectic/divideConquer #pov

I read the title as "Amish's Amendment". Wondering what the Amish did to illicit such attention from the NSA.

Well, they are practically untrackable under the current surveillance architecture, and they do have those strange beards...

Which way did Obama himself vote?

He didn't have to, because it didn't pass the House.

However, he's been vocally supporting spying, so it's assumed he would have voted No on this bill.

Now you know who runs America.

Right, the ones we cannot criticize...

The downvotes just proves my point.

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